They Grow Them in Nibelheim
by Erisah Mae
Summary: A series of oneshots about BAMF!Nibelheimers. Cloud's Recruitment into the SOLDIER Cadet programme. Why Tifa became Zangan's student and then a terrorist. Canonish. Rated for foul-mouthed Nibelheimers.
1. Cloud's Story

Disclaimer: Do I look like a millionaire to you? I don't own shit, I just play with people's universes.

They Grow Them in Nibelheim

When the kid first walked in the door, announcing politely that his name was Cloud Strife, (seriously? Cloud? What on Gaea were his parents thinking?), the recruiter didn't think he looked like much.

Skinny little arms and legs, slight torso, those great big blue eyes that were disturbingly reminiscent of a week-old kitten's. Stupid fluffy blonde hair that stuck up at odd angles from his head. The recruiter would be shocked if the kid had gone through puberty yet.

In his slightly worn and baggy clothes, and with his soft foreign accent, he looked exactly like what he was- a mountain boy, on his first jaunt to the big city. He looked exactly like dozens of other kids that the recruiter had met that day, obviously too young to be applying, probably a runaway.

He had half a mind to send the kid straight back home to his poor mama. No doubt the poor woman was worried sick.

In fact, he had opened his mouth to do just that, when those big blue eyes caught his, and suddenly, something completely different came out of his mouth.

It wasn't only the eyes of kittens that were blue.

"Where exactly did you say you were from again kid?"

The Strife kid's eyes widened slightly (Gaea those peepers were abnormally huge), and the kid told him again, "Nibelheim."

The recruiter thought about this for a moment, looked at the kid, and his worn out and frfankly somewhat filthy clothes, and then looked up at the map that was on the wall.

"How did you get here?" Somehow he just knew the answer wasn't going to be that the kid was staying with distant relatives.

The kid shrugged. "Hitch-hiked where I could. Walked where I couldn't. Collected enough monster parts to barter my crossing from Costa Del Sol to Midgar. What?" he asked when he saw the recruiter's eyebrows go up.

"Let me get this straight," the recruiter said. "You kid, are telling me that you fucking walked and hitch-hiked your way across most of a continent, alone, and along the way fighting enough monsters that you managed to afford your passage to the Plate?"

The kid shrugged again. "Not quite. I've spent a couple weeks in the slums running errands before I could afford the pass to get up here. Some old guy offered to pay my way in one go if I did him a favour, but I didn't like the look of him, so I ended up clearing out some minor monsters on the edge of Sector 6 for a while. After the first day or so a few places around Wall Market gave me discounts and deals if I did them favours. Though I still don't know what I'm going to do with that wig..."

The recruiter interrupted his ramble. Okay, so the kid could obviously handle himself. That still didn't necessarily mean that he was appropriate for the SOLDIER programme. Though the biggest problem was: "And you're how old?"

"16." The reply was quiet, firm, and obviously complete bald-faced bullshit.

The recruiter rolled his eyes.

"Does your mama know where you're at kid?"

The Strife kid's brows lowered. "'Course she does. She would have kicked my arse if I'd gone away without telling her."

The kid sounded entirely serious. Somehow the recruiter didn't doubt that Cloud meant that quite literally.

"What does she think of her baby boy becoming a SOLDIER?"

Cloud snorted. "She's not overfond of ShinRa, but told me that it would be good practice for when I become a mercenary." He sounded like he was quoting, and rolled his eyes.

Despite himself, the recruiter was intrigued.

"She wants you to become a mercenary?" he asked, not bothering to hide his surprise. He had two kids himself and while he would be proud if his boy managed to get into the SOLDIER programme, he wouldn't be all that disappointed if he didn't make it in. The life expectancy for SOLDIERs wasn't great, and the life expectancy for a mercenary was even lower. Come to think of it, he wasn't even sure the company would let the kid go if he got that far. Ex-SOLDIERs were as rare on the ground as ex-Turks. Still, not something to tell a fresh prospective recruit. He could lose his job over dropping out that little nugget of info, or worse, become Turk bait.

The kid nodded seriously, as though "mercenary" was as standard a profession as a doctor or a plant worker. "She knows I don't have the slightest interest in farming," he said, as though that was the only other option, "and this way I can get trained up, see the world, visit interesting places, kill dangerous monsters and do it all on ShinRa's gil."

The recruiter leaned back in his chair, and ignored the ominous creak. Stupid cheap ShinRa furniture. He decided one last shot of appealing to the kid's no doubt absent sanity.

"You seem to have this all figured out. What about your Dad? He think this is a good idea?"

The kid shrugged again. "Dunno. Never met the guy. Mum says he died. Some of the people around town say really quietly that he thought Mum was the other kind of farm girl when he proposed, and couldn't handle it when he found out the truth, so he scarpered."

The recruiter felt his eyebrows raise. "_Other_ kind of farm girl?"

The kid nodded seriously again. "Yeah, for some reason he thought that when she said she harvested meat and root vegetables, he thought she meant cows." Cloud snorted. "As if the Nibel Mountains are the kind of terrain you could raise cattle on. Goats maybe, only there are too many poisonous plants and monsters around to make them a viable livestock. Still, even if he didn't know that, you'd think that the guy would have thought to ask what was in the stew Mum cooked for him all the time."

Now this the recruiter had to know. "So what does go into your Mum's stew?"

The kid laughed. "Same thing that goes into all Nibel Stew. It's our regional dish after all."

The recruiter just looked confused. "Can't say I've ever had any, so I wouldn't know."

The kid cocked his head. "Oh, right. Guess I shouldn't be so surprised. Once I got as far as Costa del Sol people didn't seem to even know where Nibelheim _is_. Some idiot even asked me if I was from near Bone Town- it's not even on the same continent!" He shook his head, as though he couldn't believe such ignorance.

The recruiter did his best to hide a smile. "Nibelheim _is_ more than a little out of the way. You still haven't told me kid, what goes into Nibel Stew?"

The kid looked him in the eye. "Nibel wolf of course."

The recruiter had been chosen for his ability to remain deadpan, but still, he knew that his eyebrows were currently somewhere around his hairline. Oh well. He'd like to see his superiors keep a straight face around this kid. He was a riot.

"So what, you people farm wolves up in Nibelheim? This is what you meant by your Mum being the other kind of farmgirl?"

Cloud rolled his eyes. "They're wild animals sir, of course we don't farm them." His tone unmistakeably labelled the recruiter an idiot if he actually meant his previous statement seriously. "Farmers in Nibelheim grow root crops and raise green chocobos. And," he said, when the recruiter opened his mouth to interrupt, "because by necessity they live on the outskirts of town, they're the first in the line of fire when we get attacked by wild monsters. Random encounters are fairly frequent, so there isn't such thing as a Nibel farmer who can't defend themselves. If there ever is, they don't tend to live all that long."

To the recruiter, Cloud seemed to be rather matter-of-fact about all of this. "Mum gets more than a little grudging respect around town because after she got disowned for having me out of wedlock, she was living on her own and still managed to survive and make sure I lived long enough to be able to protect myself. But yeah," Cloud continued, "Nibel wolves are the most common, and the most edible, so we make stew out of them." He grinned savagely. "We have a saying in Nibelheim. It goes, 'do not fuck with us, because we are cold, hungry, and you taste excellent with herbs and spices.'"

The recruiter just stared at him.

The kid looked back at him, as completely serious as he had been from the start of this little interview.

The recruiter looked down at his check list, looked up at the kid, looked down at his checklist again, and made a few notations. He looked back up at the kid again.

"Out of interest kid, if I tell you that you're too young, and you won't make it, then what are you going to do?"

Cloud Strife stood up as tall as his five foot nothing much frame allowed. "Then I'll respectfully tell you to shove it, sir, and I'll keep coming back until someone lets me in."

The recruiter just nodded. He'd been expecting that answer. "Right. So just assuming I let you in, what weapon or materia skills do you already have?"

Cloud shrugged. "None really. Sometimes I throw rocks, or pick up a branch or something. Oh, and I keep a knife in my boot, but that's mostly as a last resort if the monster gets too close. Does any of that count?"

The recruiter inhaled slowly. "Do you mean to tell me that you habitually take on monsters with whatever is lying around?" The recruiter was very proud of himself. He didn't sound sarcastic, or like he was talking to a crazy person at all. No. The years of training and experience he had as a ShinRa had not been for nothing after all. He was maintaining a calm and even tone in the face of ludicrous conditions.

"And my knife, sir," the kid said promptly, helpfully. Seriously.

The recruiter groaned internally. He knew he was going to regret this next question.

"Show me your knife."

The kid nodded, and pulled out a well-used, but also well-cared-for-looking knife. Well, more like a machete really. The recruiter decided he wasn't even going to ask how the kid managed to keep _that_ concealed. Still, he went up against monsters with _that_ worn out thing and no armour?

Apparently he'd said that out loud, because the kid shrugged. "I don't see what the big deal is. My friend Tifa fights monsters with her knuckles in a midriff top and mini skirt."

Of course she did.

The recruiter looked disbelievingly at the kid. Against all common sense, he didn't think the kid was lying. Now that he looked more carefully, there was barely an inch of fat on him, barring his baby-face. The kid looked as stringy as a slum stew, and his ridiculous fluffy hair flopped around making the kid resemble some kind of dandelion. He sure didn't look like much, but then again, he wasn't exactly some kind of soft Plate Kid. If even half of what he was saying was true, the recruiter was willing to bet that the kid didn't scare easily, and he was probably as tough as an old boot.

Furthermore, the kid was obviously determined. The recruiter didn't doubt his claim that if he told him to get lost, he'd just keep coming back. Those blue eyes might look kittenish at first glance, but at second, he was suddenly reminded of those weird winged things that had killed one of his comrades in the Ancient Forest when they had been on a routine mission not too far from Gongaga.

Diablos. That's what they were called. They had blue eyes too.

Okay, fine.

Look out SOLDIER programme. Here comes Cadet Cloud Strife, under-aged twig, eater of Nibel wolf meat, and wielder of his "knife".

May you both survive each other.

-Several years later-

"So Cloud, you never did tell me why you didn't make it into SOLDIER," said Tifa, as she wiped down the bar of Seventh Heaven. "Couldn't meet the physical demands?"

Cloud, who had been sitting on a barstool drinking a beer nearly spat out his drink in indignation.

He didn't though, because that would be a waste of beer, and if he wasted beer, Mama Strife would come back from the dead just to slap him upside the head. He was pretty superstitious about that kind of thing these days, considering how for Sephiroth at least the gates of the Lifestream were more like a revolving door.

"Hey! I'll have you know I aced hand to hand. You don't think a guy can spend three years being experimented on semi-comatose and then suddenly pop out magically knowing how to kick arse do you?"

Tifa shrugged. "Hey, how was I supposed to know? You always were a bit of a runt, and you tended to lose fights back in Nibelheim."

"They were like five on one! And I didn't lose, I drew. Why do you think they used to gang up on me like that? It just wasn't fair otherwise."

Tifa considered this, and then decided that maybe he had a point. "Never really gave a shit to be honest," she said, continuing to wipe down the bar. "I was too busy punching wolves and trying to give my father a heart attack with my outfits and general desire to leave Nibelheim."

"Oh thanks, Tifa," Cloud scowled, taking an annoyed swig of his drink. "Nice to know my 'childhood friend' cared."

"Oh fuck off Cloud," Tifa laughed. "We both know that you made your 'promise' to my tits."

Cloud rolled his eyes, and took another sip of his beer. He knew better than to confirm or deny that statement, and couldn't be bothered reminding Tifa that he had made the 'promise' to 'save her' more because she had been one of the few girls in town who understood the value of a decent fight. She reminded him of him, and he knew that he was going crazy with boredom in Nibelheim, and wouldn't wish that fate on anyone else.

Besides, she had been pretty flat-chested back then, being about 12 and all. Unlike the next time he had seen her... but even then, it was only really aesthetically that Cloud appreciated Tifa's rack. When it came down to it, girls just weren't really his area...

Blissfully unaware of the direction Cloud's thoughts were going in, Tifa went back to their previous topic of conversation.

"Seriously though, why didn't you make the cut? I mean, I know you originally got Sephiroth with a sneak attack, but still, it was fucking Sephiroth, who managed to take out pretty much our whole goddamn village single-handedly, not to mention him beating the shit out of me and that Zack guy."

There were a few moments of reflective silence. Oh Nibelheim. It was a shit-hole, but it had been _their_ shit-hole. Fucking Sephiroth. Cloud was almost glad he'd had multiple opportunities to kill the fucker.

Tifa continued. "Considering you then dumped him in the fucking materia _after _ he'd stabbed you through with Masamune, you weren't exactly soft then, and that was _before_ Hojo got his slimy paws on you and turned you into the green-eyed wonder. So seriously, is the soldier programme just that hardcore? Were there intelligence tests you failed? What?"

"Actually, I didn't fail any of the tests," Cloud said, scratching the back of his head in embarrassment.

"What!" Tifa dropped her cloth. "But you didn't get into the programme!"

"Wellll yes and no. Technically I got in, but it was provisional on me doing a two-year stint in regular army first." Cloud wrinkled his nose. "And then that Sephiroth clusterfuck went down, so I never did get my chance. They wouldn't have even let me near that mission with the General if I was useless in a fight, as much as any 'team' with Sephiroth was generally seen as window-dressing, or worst case scenario, bait. But then Hojo happened and implanted all of those memories of Zack's, so I guess in a fucked up kinda way I am an ex-SOLDIER after all. I got the mako, and I remember half the missions and the bootcamps, and on the upside I didn't have to pretend to like President ShinRa so I guess close enough."

Tifa just stared at him incredulously. Sometimes she forgot that Cloud was more than a bit insane. She decided to go back to a nice, neutral topic. "So why did they make your entry provisional?"

Cloud smirked, mako green eyes glinting. "Funnily enough, it was the same reason the local boys back home tried to beat the shit out of me on a regular basis."

"Oh? What's that?"

"They said I had a bad attitude."

…...

_A/N: Before you all go off at me for not working on Butterfly Genjutsu, you can expect an update on that by the end of the week. Surprise! I'm not dead!_

_The reason I wrote this little piece was because I've been reading a lot of FFVII fanfic lately. For those of you unfamiliar with it, it's an entertainingly batshit insane fanbase, with a ridiculous amount of slash. Don't get me wrong, a quick trip to my favs list will show that I'm as big a slash fan as the next fanbrat, but still, wow. The fact that there is more than one Angeal/Genesis/Sephiroth/Zack/Cloud community should say all that needs to be said there._

_But for some reason, people seem to have decided that pre-Hojo!Cloud (aka the Cloud that usually shacks up with Sephiroth in fanfic) is kinda pathetic. I mean, okay, sure, he didn't make it into SOLDIER first try. But give the kid a break, he was what, 14?, and even though he might be ridiculously weaker than say, Sephiroth, Demon of Wutai, who can two-shot a dragon, this doesn't mean kid!Cloud was a pathetic cry baby. It takes more than hero-worship to get a kid to a mean city that's on a different continent to sign up to fight shit. Sure kid!Cloud sounds like he was a bit idealistic and wanted to be just like his hero and save the day. Even if he ends up banging his hero as he seems to in every other fanfic in this verse, I don't see how this automatically makes him a limp-wristed uke. Not that there's anything wrong with that, if it's your thing, I just don't think it really fits with this character._

_So yes, Cloud is gay, and like anyone else from Nibelheim in my brain, kicks a lot of arse. Deal with it. If anyone is about to flame me about not warning them about my one sentence of implied slash, I suggest they buy some climbing gear and get over themselves._

_No, I couldn't be bothered writing a pairing in this fic because in the end it wasn't about his love life. I'm surprised it even came up honestly, but then Tifa's tits happened, and Cloud had to have a response (albeit not one he shared with Tifa). So yeah, consider this a choose your own M/M pairing, if you're a die-hard shipper. Although obviously not Sephiroth in this case, because Cloud has given him at least a semi-permanent terminal case of dead, and is a little bit sore over the whole "Sephiroth killed his entire village including Mama Strife, and then burned it to the ground" thing. Generally a bit of a stumbling block for a potential relationship._

_So yeah, review if you feel like, I mostly wrote this for my own satisfaction. Maybe I'll add a few oneshots to this, maybe not. Am half thinking about writing a companion piece about Tifa being hardcore. What do you lot reckon?_

_-Erisah_


	2. Tifa's Story

Zen and the Art of Bare-knuckle Monster Fighting

Tifa Lockhart had once been a spoilt brat.

The only child of the Mayor of Nibelheim, to say she acted "entitled" was a polite euphemism for what anyone could see was Tifa having her father wrapped firmly around her little finger. Her mother had been a moderating force in her life, trying to instil the value of discipline and working towards her goals in her daughter, but the poor woman had been struck down by an incurable disease when Tifa was eight, still young enough to believe stupid stories, like the idea that the dead lived on the mountain on the other side of the rickety old rope bridge that crossed the chasm on the way to the Nibelheim Mako Reactor.

When her mother died, her father had naturally been completely distraught. Tifa herself had felt like the world had ended. With little warning, one of the supporting pillars of her childhood had crumbled into nothing, dispersing in green mist as she died.

Tifa didn't cry.

The fact that her father had not come out of his room in three days convinced her young mind that he was going to die too.

Tifa didn't cry because she was sure she could fix this.

She thought that if she crossed the rope bridge to Mount Nibel, she would be able to bring her mother back, and then she and her Daddy could be happy again, because Mummy would be home.

Obviously that wasn't how things had turned out.

Cloud had tried to talk her out of it. That kid had always been smarter than anyone gave him credit for. When she refused to listen to reason, he followed, to make sure she didn't get hurt.

It didn't work out that way- the bridge collapsed, Tifa fell, and Cloud got the blame.

In retrospect, Tifa had to admit that the inhabitants of Nibelheim had always been pretty irrational when it came to Cloud Strife and his mother.

She had been just as bad. She was banned from talking to Cloud, and during the daylight hours she had had little to no qualms about following her father's decree.

During the nights, when she slipped out of the house because she wasn't supposed to but because she could, she talked to Cloud because doing so made her feel like she was a rebel.

When Cloud spoke to her for the last time before he left to chase his SOLDIER dream, she made him promise to be her hero, and to come back for her. She wasn't much of a scholar, but she knew enough that the world was a big and interesting place, and that she wanted to leave her cold mountain home. On the other hand, she knew (her father always told her) that the outside world was a dangerous place, full of monsters, ShinRa, and "unsavoury types" (as Cloud apparently warranted this description, Tifa was unimpressed by this last one at least), all likely to chew her up and spit her back out again.

If she had a hero, then she would be able to have her adventures, without the danger.

But then Cloud left, and for over seven months she didn't hear even a word from him. At the time she wasn't to know, but she wouldn't (knowingly) see or hear from Cloud again for almost six years.

As far as Tifa was concerned, Cloud had disappeared without a trace. It was likely he wasn't coming back, for whatever reason. She didn't kid herself- she knew she had treated him like dirt over the years, and so it would serve her right if his promise had been empty.

It was about this point that the old man in the red cape had shown up.

Tifa, sitting at the dining table, heard from Ava, the cook, that his name was Zangan, and that he was a famous teacher of martial arts. He apparently had students all over the world, a select and elite group known for their discipline and their prowess at the school of martial arts known as the Zangan Fist. One of his students in fact had escorted him to town, and Ava had been "appalled" (delighted- Ava loved to gossip, old-fashioned busybody that she was) that Zangan's student was a woman. It wasn't that she was bothered by a woman fighting, (few inhabitants of Nibelheim had the luxury of being useless at fighting monsters, especially the few stand-outs like the Strife Woman,) but rather that she thought it was improper that a woman should travel alone with a man like that, albeit that Zangan was obviously old enough to be his student's father, if not grandfather.

Listening to Ava's gossip with half an ear, Tifa suddenly had an epiphany.

If Cloud couldn't be her hero, then why couldn't she be her own?

Why indeed?

It was at that point that Tifa, spoilt Daddy's Girl (the spoiling had only gotten worse after her mother's death) had her first fight with her father, when she proposed he help arrange lessons for her with this Zangan. In retrospect, she had to admit that maybe he had had a point. Mayor Lockhart knew his baby girl all too well, and knew that the moment Tifa felt she had the skills to back up her audacity, she was going to go looking for trouble (that was indeed the plan).

He was convinced that if she learned how to fight from a Master like Zangan, she would get cocky, and then she would take on a monster or an opponent who was too strong for her, and the next thing he knew, he would be putting up a memorial marker for his daughter next to his wife's.

Over his dead body.

Tifa had been shocked at her father's reaction, and had ended up running into her bedroom and slamming the door behind her. Sitting on her bed, she hugged her pillow to herself, seethed and considered her options.

How dare the old man hold her back? He didn't understand. She needed this.

The very next day, Tifa tracked down Zangan, introduced herself, and demanded he take her on as a student.

"Not a chance," he had replied, calm as a cave pool.

"What do you mean, not a chance!" Tifa had shouted, fists clenched at her sides.

Zangan had shrugged. "I don't teach spoilt, disrespectful brats."

And then left, before Tifa could do more than gape at him.

She stared at the space that the Master had been occupying just moments before, and bit her lip, doing her best to avoid bursting into tears. She hadn't cried since just after the bridge incident, when she finally realised that her mother was gone for good, and she refused to do so now. This was merely a temporary set back.

Oh who was she kidding?

Tifa considered how easy it would be to give up. She would go home, and tell her father that he was right. He would pat her on the head, like he always had, and then he would tell her it was okay, and that he would always protect her, and she would always be his little girl. She would then stay in the village, and marry one of the stupid boys she'd grown up with and come to view with contempt (partly because she had known them since they were all snot-nosed toddlers, partly because they talked to her chest rather than her face), and pop out like three babies before she was 20.

Maybe another two before she got too old and fat for her husband to be interested in her any more. Then she would spend the rest of her days raising her children, living vicariously through them until the cycle repeated again with her sons and daughters, as she cooked and cleaned and changed nappies and lived quietly, respectably in a little thatch-roofed cottage, never leaving the town that she had grown up in.

Fuck that.

Tifa gritted her teeth and decided that she needed to change her approach. She had gone about this entirely the wrong way- she had assumed that Zangan would care that she was Tifa Lockhart, the Mayor's daughter. Everyone else in town always let her get away with murder just because of that fact, especially since her mother's death, because they pitied her.

Tifa hated being pitied, but she wasn't above using that pity for her own ends.

Zangan however, she realised, was like Mrs Strife.

Mrs Strife had never bought into Tifa's innocent ingenue act. Tifa suspected it was at least partly because the woman was annoyed with her for getting Cloud into trouble, but mostly because Mrs Strife was a woman who stood proudly on her own two feet, and fuck anyone who tried to suggest she couldn't. Mrs Strife was civil to Tifa, but refused to indulge her. When Tifa had appeared unannounced on Mrs Strife's doorstep, asking to be let in for a cup of tea, Mrs Strife had laughed in her face.

"Either say what you want, or get out. I don't have time to cater to the needs of spoilt princesses."

Tifa had been infuriated and insulted, but desperate for news of Cloud. After three days of trying different methods, she finally figured out that the way to get the curmudgeonly woman to give her information was to offer to help her in whatever chores she was performing around the Strife plot.

As it turned out, it sounded as though Cloud's letters to his mother were few, far between, and generally pretty uninformative. Tifa supposed that was typical of a boy. After a while though, she kept coming for two reasons.

The first was that she had grown to genuinely respect Mrs Strife. Mrs Strife backed down for nothing and no one. Whether it was the merchants who bought her produce, or Tifa's father demanding to know what she had been teaching his daughter (Tifa's vocabulary had expanded in new and vulgar ways in her association with Mrs Strife), or the Nibel wolves that occasionally attempted to raid the Strife chicken coop, Mrs Strife would plant her feet, square her shoulders, let loose a stream of invective and then (in the case of the wolves this was almost literal) fight whoever or whatever it was tooth and nail until she had got what she wanted.

The second reason was that Mrs Strife's Nibel Stew was infinitely better than Ava's.

So Tifa figured that if she wanted to win over this Zangan guy to be her teacher, then she was going to have to try something like what she had tried with Mrs Strife.

The next morning, she showed up at his front door.

After knocking for a few minutes, she figured out that he was out.

Her plan temporarily thwarted, Tifa went searching.

She eventually spotted a red cape hanging by a small mountain creek, and saw that Zangan was standing thigh-deep in the icy water catching fish with his bare hands.

She stood by the side of the creek until he pretended to notice her.

Tifa wasn't fooled. She'd noticed the slight tension that had appeared in his stance until he had glanced at her out the corner of his eye and deemed that she wasn't a threat.

"What do you want, little girl?" Zangan asked her, sounding dismissive.

Tifa's chin went up, but otherwise she remained as she was. "I want you to teach me to fight."

Zangan snorted. "I told you my answer yesterday. I don't teach spoilt brats."

Tifa nodded. "Fair enough," she said. And waited.

Zangan's forehead creased into well-worn lines as he raised silver brows.

"Well? What are you still doing here?"

Tifa resisted the urge to fold her arms defiantly in front of her. "I'm watching to see what a Master does," she said. "Then I'll figure out how to prove to you that I might be a spoilt brat, but I can be more than that. I have to be more than that," she said, the last sentence mostly to herself.

Zangan had obviously heard everything she said, and studied her.

"Why does a little girl like you want to learn how to fight anyway? You want adventures? You want to run off and fight monsters and save the day?"

Tifa nodded.

Obviously.

Then she saw the denial about to spill from Zangan's lips, and quickly, and firmly added, "Yes, but more than that," she blurted out, "I want to be strong enough."

Zangan looked skeptical. "Strong enough for what?" he sneered.

Tifa looked down at her feet for a moment, distantly noticing that her shoes were ruined by mud. She considered her answer. What would impress him? What did he want to hear?

What was true?

Finally, she faced forward, looked him dead in the eye, and then said, "I want to be strong enough to choose. To be able to protect myself, and others. I want to be able to choose what I want to do, where I want to go, and to not be too scared to leave here by myself." Words that she hadn't even realised that she had, words she hadn't really thought through flowed from her. "I want to be strong, independent, and able to kick the arse of anything and anyone that would stop me from living."

She stopped, and waited for a response.

The moment seemed to stretch to an aeon, as Zangan's expression became inscrutable as a slab of granite as he considered her words.

"No," he said finally.

Tifa's heart sank into her muddy shoes.

"Why?" she demanded.

Zangan shrugged. "You haven't convinced me that you're serious," he said.

Tifa clenched her fists, and fought to keep calm. Getting angry would only support the old man's "spoilt brat" theory.

"What can I do to convince you that I'm serious?" she asked, fighting to keep her tone from being whiny.

Zangan's expression went back to inscrutable granite. Tifa waited with as much patience as she could possibly muster for his answer.

"Come back tomorrow, and meet me at my house," he said. "At dawn."

If he had been expecting Tifa, who hadn't been up before the sun was shining since she was a toddler, to argue, well, Tifa refused to give him the satisfaction.

"Alright," she said, a little defiance leaking out into her tone. "I'll see you tomorrow bright and early then."

…..

The next morning, it was practically black when Tifa slipped out her window and ran to Zangan's house.

She arrived there gasping for breath, just as the sky started to lighten.

Zangan emerged from the shadows, a hulking mass.

Fortunately for Tifa's pride, she recognised him before the scream building in her lungs reached her vocal cords.

"Morning!" she said instead, too loudly and brightly.

"Hn," Zangan said. He looked her up and down, but made no comment as to her somewhat dishevelled appearance. "Make yourself useful and get some water out of the well and pour it into the trough here," he gestured to a large stone basin a few metres away. He thrust a small bucket into her hands. "Here, use this."

Tifa mentally compared the size of the leaky-looking bucket, and the size of the trough. The latter had the volume of at least twenty of the former.

"Where's the well?" she asked the Master.

Zangan pointed to a narrow, winding path that disappeared up the mountain.

Tifa resisted the urge to groan, knowing perfectly well that she had signed up for this.

Instead, she just nodded.

"By the way," came Zangan's voice as she turned to move off.

"Yes, sir?"

"I want you to balance the bucket on your head. If you spill anything, you have to start again."

This time Tifa had to turn away to hide her grimace of dismay.

This was going to take awhile.

…

Finally, Tifa poured the last bucket of water into the trough. Trekking up and down the mountain so many times (probably a third more than she should have, because she had spilt the water from the bucket a few times at the start) had worn her out. She smiled in triumph.

Zangan, who had been going through some sort of kata, came over and surveyed the fullness of the trough. He nodded.

"Adequate."

Tifa grinned.

"Now I want all this water back in the well."

"Son of a-!"

"Excuse me?" Zangan suddenly looked dangerous amd looming.

Tifa gulped. "That wasn't directed at you sir."

"Oh?" Zangan looked sceptical of this claim.

"No sir. I was just letting go of my frustration."

Zangan raised an eyebrow, but let her go.

….

The frustratingly pointless water trek was barely the start of a long list of to what Tifa could only assume was some sort of bizarre hazing ritual. She knew it was a test. She could see the assessing look that was in Zangan's eyes whenever she waited for her next task.

So he made her gather enough twigs to re-thatch his roof. Then he made her catch fish in the creek with her bare hands. Then he made her climb to the very top of the tallest tree he could find and bring down a bag of pine-cones. When she cheated by dropping the full bag to the ground before climbing down, he filled a back pack with rocks and then made her do it again.

Every stupid, pointless, demeaning chore that Tifa had ever heard tell of, and a few she was sure he invented right on the spot just to fuck with her, was given to Tifa by Zangan. If she had thought winning over Mama Strife was hard, well... this was setting a whole new standard for difficult.

She refused to give up.

She wasn't going to give the old bastard the satisfaction.

Zangan or her father.

…..

"Alright," he finally said.

Tifa opened her mouth to let out a whoop, but was immediately silenced as he raised a hand.

"On a trial basis only! You're on probation. The first time you slack off or piss me off, you're not my student any more, understood?"

Tifa nodded fervently, unable to keep the grin from nearly splitting her face.

"And change into something that isn't going to get caught on shit. I can't believe you've stuck it out with that dress for so long," Zangan said, shaking his head.

Tifa's brow wrinkled. "But you wear a cape! Doesn't that get in the way?"

Zangan snorted. "Of course it does."

"Then why...?"

"Don't question the Master!"

"...Yes sir."

…...

"What the hell are you wearing, brat?"

Tifa looked down at her mini-shorts and midriff top.

"What? You said to wear something that wouldn't get caught on things," she said defensively.

Zangan looked her up and down, opened his mouth, paused, and then shrugged.

"Well I guess it'll make your opponents underestimate you. And if they're straight males they'll be distracted I suppose."

Tifa snorted. "Oh puh-lease, even Cloud can't keep his eyes off me in this outfit."

"...On that note, I'm going to teach you the art of sitting quietly."

"Huh? Why the hell would I want to do that?"

"Meditation, brat. If you can find your centre, you can control your emotions, and then keep a cool head in a fight. Now, what I want you to do is..."

…..

Tifa stood in a clearing punching a tree. Her knuckles would currently be bloody were it not for the tape and the leather gloves she was wearing. As it was, the tree was starting to look ring-barked from all the damage it had taken from her.

Scowling, she thought about the fight she had had with her father just this morning. Ava had dobbed her in, finally. It had only taken her a year to notice that Tifa sneaked out of bed before dawn every morning to get tortured by Zangan in the name of becoming strong.

Privately, Tifa wondered how it was that the gossip hadn't gotten back to her father long before now. Nibelheimers weren't exactly known for minding their own business.

_She didn't care that he didn't like how she hung around Mama Strife. _

Last week, the woman had allowed Tifa to take on the Nibel wolves that attacked all by herself. Her training with Zangan had been tested, and in Tifa's opinion she had passed with flying colours. She had managed to take down one of the wolves with one punch to the nose, caving in the beast's skull. Mama Strife had clapped her on the back and let her help butcher the wolves and make Mama Strife's special Nibel stew.

Even the people who snerked about Mama Strife's single-unmarried-motherdom had to admit that her cooking kicked arse.

_She didn't care that he didn't like her clothes._

Wasn't it normal for teenagers to upset their parents with the way they dressed? Besides, it wasn't like she was the village chocobo or anything. She'd shared a few kisses with boys, behind various trees and buildings, but for the most part they bored her. The ones that had claimed that she went further than that with them had been introduced to the twins, Ms Left and Right Fist.

That had shut them up.

_However, if he thought he could say those things about Master Zangan and expect her to talk to him ever again, he had another think coming._

Only she was allowed to call Zangan a sadistic old bastard, and she had earned that right in bruises, sweat, blood, and tears of frustration. His training methods alternated between infuriating and brutal.

But they worked.

Her father's worst fears had come true- Tifa was strong enough to look after herself now, and as soon as she saved up enough money, she was going to move to one of the cities and try her luck in the outside world. She had outgrown Nibelheim for the moment, and she wanted to see the world, kill some monsters, and maybe even find a guy she could respect. A guy who would stand up to her, but not doubt her abilities. A guy who could keep up with her in a fight.

A guy that had these qualities but wasn't Master Zangan.

Handsome and her age were traits that would be nice, but not necessary.

Master Zangan had made her strong, had made her able to fight for herself.

He had taught her patience. Toughness. Discipline.

He had made it so that she didn't need to wait for a hero.

And her father had as much as said that he didn't respect her choices- in instructor or in the direction she wanted her life to go. He wanted her to still be his pampered little princess.

He wanted the spoilt brat back.

Tifa brought back her fist and did a hard combo on the tree, screaming her frustration.

The trunk abruptly snapped, and Tifa had to dive out of the way as the branches came hurtling towards her.

Rolling to her feet, covered in dust and pine-needles, Tifa looked breathlessly at the mass of branches lying where she had been standing seconds before and laughed hysterically.

Zangan, who had been doing his own training somewhere in the background, appeared soundlessly somewhere to her left.

"More meditation, I think," was all he said.

Tifa just nodded and moved to sit cross-legged in a sunny spot a little ways away.

…..

Two weeks later, Sephiroth and Shinra came.

The dark-haired SOLDIER Zack was friendly enough. The General was about as friendly as an ice sculpture, but he was interesting in a striking-awe-and-fear-into-the-hearts-of-all kind of way.

One of the troopers kept ducking his head whenever Tifa looked at him. She wondered if he was shy, or if he was looking at her breasts. Probably a combination of both, she thought to herself.

It felt strange, guiding the group up the mountain to the reactor. They were all very quiet and professional, except for Zack, who bounced around and made wise cracks, alternating flirting with Tifa and trying to get a rise out of the General. Tifa was sure that she could feel the eyes of the trooper on her back, but since he hadn't really said or done anything concrete, she resisted the urge to smash his helmet visor into his face.

Besides, it wouldn't do to bruise the clients when they were paying her enough to get those new gloves she had been ogling for the past year. Tifa resisted the urge to sigh enviously as she thought of how much more powerful those gloves would make her punches. Sure, she could take out Nibel wolves with her bare hands, but she had heard of these things called Zoloms, and with the new gloves, she reckoned she could take them...

….

Sephiroth changed after he went to the reactor. Tifa was getting some really weird vibes from him. Something deep in her monkey brain told her to turn around and run for her life, as fast as she could go.

Tifa ignored her impulse. Of course the General was dangerous. There was a reason why they called him the Demon of Wutai after all, but even his companions seemed a bit worried.

Still, it wouldn't be long before all the Shinra left. Right? Then it wouldn't be her problem any more. The crazy military types would all go back to Midgar.

….

Then Nibelheim burned.

…...

Tifa woke up with a groan. Her hair smelled like smoke, like the time she fell asleep in front of the bonfire at some party. Soot, ash and small burns covered her body. A larger burn was on her upper back, where she remembered a piece of burning timber had struck her.

She sat up, and realised that she was in a narrow copse of bushes, high up on Mt. Nibel. The place was a little familiar, as Zangan had shown it to her as an example when he was teaching her stealth. She knew she could look down the mountain from her hiding place and not be seen.

She did just that, and gasped in horror.

Her village had been razed to the ground.

Blue-suited Shinra employees were already doing clean-up, looking like an army of beetles picking over a corpse. A shout drifted up to her vantage point, and she watched as a charred figure stumbled out from one of the buildings.

Tifa's heart leapt.

A survivor! Thank-

A gunshot rang out, and the charred figure dropped to the ground.

Two blue-suited minions strolled in an unhurried, business-like way towards the body. One of them kicked it, and then, having ascertained that the survivor no longer held that distinction, the two blue-suited people dragged the body away towards the growing pile in the town square.

Tifa trembled in her hiding place in shock.

She couldn't believe the events of the last 24 hours.

She had known that Shinra was no good- everyone knew that, even Cloud, who wanted to be a SOLDIER was well aware of that.

But this...

This was as inhuman as the General had been, after he had seen... whatever it was that had made him go stark raving homicidal.

She didn't know where that bastard had disappeared to, but when she had woken up, surprised to be alive, someone had Cured her, and dropped her far enough away from the village that she had been yet to be found by Shinra's clean-up crew. Despite that, she had a large scar across her chest from Masamune. Her "orthopedic" kevlar underwear had done the job and protected her enough that the sword hadn't just sliced her down to the bone.

She was lucky.

Tears running unheeded down her cheeks as she realised that her father was dead. She had been barely speaking to him by the end, and part of her regretted that they would never be able to reconcile now.

She had no idea where Zangan was. Part of her refused to believe that he was dead, but she knew that such a thing was unlikely. No-one could have stopped Sephiroth. No-one could have gotten in his way and lived.

(It wasn't until much later that she learned that technically, the last two points weren't true. But only technically. If it hadn't been for Hojo's monstrous medical genius, Cloud would have died. Sometimes she wondered if it would have been better for Cloud that way. Not for the world, obviously. The world needed someone to avert their apocalypses. But sometimes, when she saw Cloud sitting, staring into space with that empty look in his eyes, she wondered if part of him hadn't been carved out by Masamune.)

Mama Strife was dead too. Cloud was going to be devastated.

Cloud...

Tifa nodded to herself. Cloud had to be told what had happened here. Cloud needed to know the truth. Then he would help her kick the shit out of Shinra. She would beat them until the blood-stains reached her elbows, literally if necessary.

They had killed her father. They had killed her Master. They had killed her village.

She would get revenge on Shinra if it was the last thing she did.

Tifa wasn't usually one to pray, but she called upon one of the old gods, the gods that Mama Strife had whispered to. "I know that battle pleases you Odin, so grant me one request. GRANT ME REVENGE! And if you do not listen, then to HELL with you!"

Tifa Lockhart stood, slowly, shakily.

Determinedly.

She was going to Midgar.

…..

Tifa nursed what the Midgarians hilariously thought was beer. Well. It would have been funnier if she hadn't just spent her last gil on her drink.

Cloud had disappeared. She had gone, bold as brass to the receptionist at Shinra's front greeting desk, and asked where he was.

The receptionist had looked down her nose at her, but after spending an inordinate amount of time huffing and pouting and flicking her curly hair around, she had deigned to look up his records in the system. After a while, the receptionist had sniffed, and told Tifa she was wasting her time, because there had never been a Cloud Strife employed by Shinra.

Tifa could tell that she was being lied to, but the guns prominently displayed by the Shinra security forces had made her decide to not push her luck. She had left the building, and after wandering around aimlessly for a while, had found this pub.

Now what?

For the first time since she had left the smoking wreckage of Nibelheim, Tifa admitted to herself that her plan had been poorly thought out. In her defense, her entire world had been destroyed by Shinra in one short day. Her father was dead. Her Master had disappeared. The mother of her now only living (she hoped- _Shinra were lying liars who lied Cloud can't be dead please no not you too!_) friend was either dead or soon to be.

Everyone and everything she had ever known was destroyed, or out of her reach, and she had just spent her last gil.

What the hell was she supposed to do now?

_Destroy Shinra_.

Well obviously, but how the fuck was she, all on her own, supposed to accomplish that?

It was then that serendipity decided to rear its sparkly head.

Sort of.

"Hey babe. You look lonely. You want some company?"

Tifa looked up, saw a man in a Shinra uniform.

It was the same uniform as those who had been "cleaning up" her village after Sephiroth.

Tifa saw red.

The next thing she knew, her knuckles were stinging slightly, and she was being hurried out of the bar by a nondescript guy with a bandanna on his head.

"So I take it you don't like Shinra then," the man deadpanned, as he guided her down an alley.

Tifa blinked up at him, her vision suddenly no longer clouded by crimson.

"Whatever gave you that impression?" she asked him vaguely, wondering what in the hell had just happened.

Bandanna chuckled. "Well, you demolishing that baby Turk might have had something to do with it. Poor kid, I think he just wanted to chat you up."

Suddenly, he dragged her into a darkened doorway, and into a random house.

Tifa growled, and abruptly pulled out of the man's guiding grip.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, calm down!" he raised his hands defensively as she whirled on him, fists raised.

"Where the _fuck_ have you taken me?" Tifa demanded.

The man gulped. "Uh... well, I guess..." he smiled weakly. "You hate Shinra, right?"

Tifa's nostrils flared.

"I want Shinra to burn," she said bluntly. "Like they made my village burn. I want to crush them, see them driven before me, and to hear the lamentation of their women. I am Ripper… Tearer… Slasher… Gouger. I am the Teeth in the Darkness, the Talons in the Night. Mine is Strength… and Lust… and Power!"

The man just stared at her, agog.

Tifa stared back, teeth gritted, still in a defensive stance. Vaguely, she noticed that some other people had come into the room at the sound of her shouting, but she was only vaguely paying attention.

"Sweet Gaea. You're fucking crazy!" Bandanna was cringing away from her, and tripped over his own feet in his hurry to get away from her.

"Wedge, what the fuck? Who the fuck is this?"

Tifa looked up, and saw a second bandanna wearer. She wondered if this was a uniform.

'Wedge', as she assumed the guy who had led her here was called, looked up sheepishly.

"Uh, she seems to really hate Shinra. I thought well... that she would make a good new recruit?"

A huge black man stepped forward, with... was that a gun on his arm? Tifa blinked.

"What's your name, lady? I think you might be our kind of crazy," he rumbled.

"I'm Tifa Lockhart of Nibelheim. Who the fuck are you guys?" she demanded.

The black guy grinned, showing dazzling white teeth.

"We're AVALANCHE. Our mission, should you choose to accept it, is to fuck up Shinra, to save the planet."

Tifa stilled. AVALANCHE? She was pretty sure they were terrorists. Word of them had reached as far as Nibelheim. But hadn't they been shut down years ago?

Could she become a terrorist? Little Tifa, who had been the belle of Nibelheim, the spoilt daughter of the Mayor?

Then she laughed at herself, bitterly, and out loud. She might sometimes channel that girl, but she hadn't been her for years. Not really. She supposed that Zangan would probably disapprove of what she was about to do, as he had always preached about patience and peace, and only fighting in self-defence, but well...

Obviously when it came to Shinra, that hadn't really worked out for him, now, had it.

She looked at the rag-tag group assessingly.

Then smiled.

Everyone except the big black guy took a hasty step back.

Tifa's grin broadened.

"Where do I sign up?"

Years later -

Cloud was sitting at the end of the bar again, looking mildly morose. Tifa interpreted this as him being in a relatively mellow mood, so she wandered over and poured him a drink.

"Tifa?"

"Yeah Cloud?"

"Why _did_ eventually convince Zangan to take you on as a student? Yuffie said that he was known for promoting inner peace in the heart of battle and all that, and well..." he trailed off.

Tifa snorted. "And 'inner peace' isn't exactly my trademark," she finished for him.

"Well... yeah," Cloud scratched the back of his head sheepishly.

Tifa poured herself a drink, and sat next to him, stretching out on the bar-stool, showing off her long legs and boobs to their best advantage as she pointed her toes and raised her hands above her head, cracking her neck.

Cloud looked away. Tifa wasn't sure if it was out of embarrassment or shyness, or because he thought she would kick his arse if he looked at her sideways.

One of these days she'd figure out why he never seemed to take her up on her offers.

Oh yeah, he had asked her a question.

"Well, the thing about that..." Tifa grinned.

"What?" Cloud asked.

"Wellllll-" Tifa drew out the word, as she considered how to say it. She had never admitted this to anyone.

"The thing is..." she paused.

Cloud scowled.

"Spit it out," he said flatly.

Tifa rolled her eyes. Cloud might be one of the scariest motherfuckers to walk the planet now, but she still remembered what he looked like drooling from mako poisoning, and when he had got his arse kicked by the snot-nosed brats back home in Nibelheim. These sorts of memories tended to demystify a person, even if they were the one who had killed Sephiroth. Twice.

"As it happens..." she paused again and giggled at how Cloud's scowl deepened. "Oh I'm kidding. Honestly. Well the thing about Zangan looking for inner peace? Completely true. I have never seen a man more determined in his search for enlightenment. Me on the other hand? Well, enlightenment has never really been one of my goals. Pissing off my father and then getting back at Shinra were really the top two motivators I had before the world nearly got meteored."

Cloud nodded. "I noticed. So, how did a spoilt brat like you manage to get tutored by a guy like him in his martial arts?"

Tifa smirked, but Cloud was interested to see that she looked a little embarrassed, too.

"After he figured out I wasn't about to give up, he decided that I was a test."

Cloud looked at her incredulously.

Tifa nodded.

For the first time in ages, Cloud burst out laughing.

…...

_A/N: Tifa's badass quotes are stolen without qualm from Conan and Beowulf. Because I could. This turned out quite a bit more serious than I meant it to, but considering the subject material, I guess we should all just be glad that this wasn't emo. So yeah. Tifa's badass origin story, from daddy's little princess to terrorist. Hope it was at least a bit believable._

_Depending on people's responses, I may or may not follow this up with a Tifa/Rude story, because part of me is curious about how it'd be possible to get that pairing to actually work without warping canon beyond all recognition. No promises._


End file.
